Watch as Sevan Matossian catches the fittest men in California during their most exposed and most triumphant moments at the California Regional, held May 13-15 in Del Mar, California.

In a hotly contested region thick with CrossFit Games veterans, nothing is guaranteed.

Dan Bailey, last year’s California Regional champion and fourth-place Games finisher, came into the competition as a favorite to take the title again, but his weekend doesn’t go as planned. After missing qualification by one spot and 15 points in 2015, Games veteran Josh Bridges is more fired up than ever, and it shows on the competition floor as he looks for redemption.

The regional weekend takes its toll on all the athletes, and Matossian is there to document the aftermath of every event as they leave it all on the floor in hopes of making it to Carson, California, for the Games.

The CrossFit Journal is a chronicle of the empirically driven, clinically tested, and community developed CrossFit program. Our mission is to provide a venue for contributing coaches, trainers, athletes, and researchers to ponder, study, debate, and define fitness and collectively advance the art and science of optimizing human performance.